For Soon-To-Be Moms, Labor’s Getting Longer

A new study by the National Institutes of Health calculates that first-time mothers spend 2.6 hours more in the first stage of labor (before pushing begins) than women did in the early 1960s.

For women who have already had at least one child, labor lasts two hours longer than it did for their historical peers. Researchers compared data on almost 140,000 deliveries from the early 1960s and the early 2000s.

The reasons why labor is lasting longer aren’t totally clear.

The modern group of mothers had a higher average body mass index and a higher average age, which can lead to a longer labor, but “even when we adjusted for those demographics labor was still longer,” says Katherine Laughon, a study author who is a physician in the Epidemiology Branch of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Researchers pointed to the increased use of epidural anesthesia, or pain killers injected into spinal fluid, as a potential contributor, but said further research is needed. Epidurals can increase delivery time, but the study authors said its use doesn’t account for all of the increase in duration of labor. Epidurals were used in more than half of the recent deliveries, compared with 4% of deliveries in the 1960s.

Modern laboring mothers received the hormone oxytocin more frequently than in the past — 31% of deliveries versus 12%. Oxytocin is given to speed up labor, so its use should reduce labor times, says Dr. Laughon in a press release.

The study’s authors said that they didn’t identify all the factors contributing to longer delivery times, and further research is needed to determine whether modern delivery practices are contributing to the increase in labor duration. The research also identified other changes over time. C-section deliveries are four times more common today than 50 years ago. And babies born in the 2000s arrived about five days earlier and tended to weigh more than their 1960s counterparts, the report said.

Comments (2 of 2)

As a mom of three, I have had the opportunity to have an epidural birth (with pitocin), a c-section, and lastly, a v-back with no drugs. The speed of the v-back with no drugs shocked me; now maybe it was because it was my third child, but I can honestly say that by letting the body do what it needs to do without the interference that drugs offer, it will do its job quickly and effectively

4:17 pm March 30, 2012

jody wrote :

It probably has something to do with the fact that so many labors are now induced with chemicals and women are not able to begin labor without drugs. The labor begins before the body is ready. Perhaps. What do I know? I wonder what the numbers are on labor times with women that do not get put on Pitocin and/or have labor induced. Birth is a big business as we know.